Boards

This film is just over halfway through and already there have been five scenes featuring Christian Slater and/or another character running towards the screen and diving as something explodes behind them.

I will put down money on there being at least 4 more by the end of the film. Who's got me?

Deak (Travolta) and Riley (Slater) end up facing off as the final nuke's timer ticks down the seconds to total meltdown. To make the climax of the film even more exciting, all of this takes place on a speeding train, littered with nameless goons that had to be killed before the final fight. Deak has also been shot in the arm by Riley by this point, from a helicopter, but the bullet wound obviously has no effect beyond a momentary grimace of mild annoyance.

Even with this tutorial demonstration, Riley still fails to deactivate the bomb first time!

Deak, has by this time given up on escaping the film alive, and is instead living out his final moments with rabid glee, taunting Riley with the bomb's remote switch and asking him to "come and get it". Helpfully, he also talks us through the complex activation/deactivation procedure, which involves a button labelled "boom" and one labelled "cancel". Unfortunately Riley doesn't pay any attention to this, and instead just charges forwards so that Deak can punch, kick and iron bar him in a prolonged, arcade style beat-em-up scene.

In this fight scene pain only lasts nano seconds, and all damage apart from superficial scrapes is instantly healed.

Eventually, Riley does get his hands on the remote control, but as mentioned, totally fails to decode the complex keypad layout, which extends the fight sequence by several more minutes.
Suddenly, the director gives the go-ahead for Riley to start winning, and all his previous damage is forgotten as he switches from being a beaten wreck of a man to an accomplished martial artist.

All tension thus removed, the scene switches to the train carriages, which Terry, (the female park ranger, in case you'd forgotten this crucial character), has contrived to be on a collision course with the carriages that the main brawl is taking place in (how she achieves this is largely irrelevant, all we need be concerned with is that there is going to be an almighty explosion).

Riley finally grasps the keypad layout, but instead of just pressing "cancel" while he's next to the bomb opts instead to hurl himself out backwards and only press the crucial key at the last possible second.

Events set in motion. Riley is finally able to leap out to safety, whilst pressing the "cancel" button on the remote control. An instant later the carriages smash into Deak's compartment, setting up a "newton's cradle" effect on the extremely heavy nuke, sending it hurtling with sunglasses-buckling force into Travolta's midriff. The camera then cuts to show Deak and the missile flying forwards into the remaining carriages, which are of course piled high with TNT.

The resulting explosion puts an end to Travolta's rakeish grin once and for all.

I love it, it makes Die Hard look like The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the scenery isn't so much knawed as chomped on and travolta may as well have been handing round huge sides of ham to everyone he's in a scene in. It has top lines like "do... not... shoot... the ... thermonuclear... weapon!!!" AND the bloomin lovely samantha mathis doing just a terrible job as everyone else. It's just as good/bad as your average series of 24, surely?